My Senegal does this but I think she just came that way. I like to say, "recall comes standard" with Poi's.....

That said....I don't know how exactly you train it except to consistently reward the behavior whenever the bird does it.

I think, flying in a circle is two behaviors:
1. Fly away
2. Come back

When training a progression of behaviors, you want to train the second part first.......so, I would start by working on a very good recall. Every time the bird flies to you....reward, reward, reward....

Before I go any further, I have to ask, Is your bird a proficient flyer right now? Does the bird know how to fly away from you?

Thanks.

Mona

I like Mona's idea of training recall first.

You could also try teaching the bird to fly to a perch, then extend those flights around some sort of obstacle until you're starting from near the perch and the bird is flying around the obstacle to the perch... Then substitute your hand for the perch when the bird comes around.

Phoebe started doing boomerang flights serendipitously (if I spelled that right). I was working on flights to my fireplace mantle when she took a 180 degree left turn into the kitchen. Then I started cueing those flights, and running into the kitchen.... once we had the basics down, I started moving the starting and ending points, until she was flying circuits around my house and I was just standing in one place.

Getting those first few boomerang flights would be hard without the bird offering the behavior... but the more flight practice you do with the bird, the more likely you are to get lucky. So, like Mona was asking, how much flight is your bird doing now?

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA

The first bird I've ever owned was a budgie, Buddy. I was about 11 years old and didn't know much about training birds. At the time I got my bird to fly around, then back to me by always provideing my hand held high in the air. Buddy soon learned that this was allways a safe landing spot.

Kenny